Difference between a select team and a traveling team.

They are just names. Summer teams are formed for different reasons. The very best usually want to compete on a national level. They also want to provide their players with the best opportunity to advance.

It doesn't matter what they are called. Guess I would just call them the top teams.

We have seen great and bad travel teams. We have seen teams that call themselves select teams with lots of talent and others with very little talent.

Anyone can call their team anything they want. It doesn't mean a thing. It's all about talent, performance, results, education and opportunity that seperates the teams.

PG pretty well summed it up. Who cares what these teams are called? We're generally referred to as a travel team organization, only to differentiate ourselves from high school summer ball. We travel a fair amount each summer, so that term seemed to make sense. Nobody really cares what we're called, it's all about the baseball, not the name.

Agree with Jerry. In Florida they are just "travel". They start as young as 8 here and some local team last year went to Puerto Rico as an 8U team to play????

we along with others have fall baseball teams that travel--somewhere along the way the term select got added--

I see four levels of travel.

1) The elite. Only the best are asked to be on the team whether by invitation or tryout.

2) Competitive, but not elite. They can win a tournament if the elite aren't there. They sometimes beat the elite in pool play.

3) The rest of the tournament teams. These kids used to be rec ball players before the explosion of travel ball. Sometimes these are started by dads who can't believe the elite and competitive teams are blind to his son's talent.

4) Then there's community based travel teams. Often it's advanced rec. They play in local town versus town leagues. If they play in a tournament they may beat you in any one game with a stud pitcher. But they ultimately get pounded due to lack of pitching depth.

In some parts of the country the elite and competitive teams sometimes play league ball against similar competition.

My view of the world is from 13U when the kids hit the 60/90 field. I can't call anything played on 50/70 elite.

We found there is a difference. The select team is more private entity that is more oriented and usually requres referral or outright recruitment. We also found the cost to be much higher with usually much more distant traveling.

Non-select traveling teams are usually made up of LL, Babe Ruth, Pony type All-Stars who pay for the privilege and are not necessarily recruited. Traveling is usually regional.

JMO

I agree with BBkaze for my area. We actually call them AAU teams as the majority play against local AAU teams in the area (hour, hour 1/2 range tops) on weekends and then travel to one or two tourneys for a weekend or maybe a week during the summer. Then there are a couple of Elite type teams that pull kids from all over New England, they are what "Rounding Third" would call a College development program. They "select" the best of the best from the area with kids travelling over 2 hours one way to make practices etc. They play in East Cobb and such. They even have had kids from other non-New England states come and stay for the summer and play for the program. They put a majority of their kids into colleges with a few being selected in the draft (hey it is new england..only so many kids get drafted from here..lol)

To me that is the difference between travel and select. Why spend the extra $$ on select when 13U, 14U and even 15U. It makes sense once you hit 16 and are a Sophomore in high school.

An example of a select (CDP) team up here in NE would be Trhit's summer team. Those kids are some of the best in New England/NY. The NE Ruffnecks would be another.

The ultimate travel team was our Chicago Cubs, a gypsy team in 1987.

This was my first year of the Area Code games.

The Cubs team was from the Northern California area
and we played 25 games before the August Area Code games. On this team was Fernando Vina, Chris Prichett, James Mouton, Andy Fox, Bo Dobson, Jim Converse and Steve Whitaker. All have played in the Major Leagues.

Bo, Jim, Chris, Steve also traveled to our Goodwill Series in 1988 in Japan.

Bob

quote:

see four levels of travel.

1) The elite. Only the best are asked to be on the team whether by invitation or tryout.

2) Competitive, but not elite. They can win a tournament if the elite aren't there. They sometimes beat the elite in pool play.

3) The rest of the tournament teams. These kids used to be rec ball players before the explosion of travel ball. Sometimes these are started by dads who can't believe the elite and competitive teams are blind to his son's talent.

4) Then there's community based travel teams. Often it's advanced rec. They play in local town versus town leagues. If they play in a tournament they may beat you in any one game with a stud pitcher. But they ultimately get pounded due to lack of pitching depth.

In some parts of the country the elite and competitive teams sometimes play league ball against similar competition.

My view of the world is from 13U when the kids hit the 60/90 field. I can't call anything played on 50/70 elite.

RJM well said. That is about my take on the levels around here.